


Hell of a Spread

by vibishan



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Asexual Character, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:04:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibishan/pseuds/vibishan
Summary: Istradez doesn't join the Shuos.Really, he might as well have.





	Hell of a Spread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karanguni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/gifts).



> Happy yuletide! Your prompts were amazing, and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Trans readers with triggers may wish to proceed with caution. No trans-related trauma, but depictions of a canon gender complicated character that some readers may find invalidating. Full details in the endnotes.

When Istradez takes the aptitude tests, she qualifies for Shuos, Andan and Vidona academies without reservation, and for Rahal secondary under track constraints. It’s a better spread than she expected, not that it matters. After almost a _year_ without Miki, Istradez is ready to chew her own fingers off to follow him.

But when the augurist asks which lenses she’d like to scry for before finalizing her applications, the part of her that loves sparkling gewgaws and chimera butterflies passes over her tests results and says, _let’s try all of them_. Just to _see_.

The augurist is Rahal, of course, and she would be plain if the habits of her faction didn’t make her so austere, bare-headed and draped in grey, her hands elegant as a musician’s as she tunes her instruments, her eyes turning clear and pale for a moment as she stares somewhere _else_ to check the time, waits for the correct moment.

At sixteen, the shapes that leap from Istradez’s heels aren’t real signifiers, aren’t anchored to her in any way; they come _through_ her as much as from her, like the rainbow cast by a prism, angled correctly to the light. They’re pale, flimsy echoes of what they could be, if she joins that faction, inverted shadows: the scrying room dims as they suck up all the light and manage to hold only scraps of it, shimmering against the walls with the soft chatoyancy of a tiger’s eye, or sunlight on rippling water.

Stingray Lashing, Scrywolf Lying in Ambush, Kniferose Moonlit, and Ninefox with Tails Knotted.

 _A hell of a spread_ , she thinks, mouth going dry as she takes small, mincing steps so that she doesn’t decenter the scrying, turning carefully in place to view them all, like the wandering needle of a hard compass on some moon without a natural magnetosphere.

Lashing is ambiguous, that kind that resists any reduction of signifiers into good or bad: dangerous, volatile, even for a Vidona. Not a schoolteacher’s sign. Not that Istradez wants anything to do with _that._ She’s never even _heard_ of Lying in Ambush - but that’s almost to be expected. The law of vital few applies to souls as much as to everything else, and _most_ signifiers listed in the codices are obscure. 

Moonlit is a tremendous omen: subtle, enhancing, entrancing. Petals and blade equally flattered by the low gleam.

Tails Knotted is a _terrible_ omen. Ineffective, self-destructive, _tragic_. It’s not on the proscribed list, but it’s barely any better than the ones that are. 

*

Mikodez is not a superstitious man.

“They don’t actually prove anything,” he insists, and he’s proud, even at seventeen, that the murmur comes out smooth and even. This isn’t about him, or anything that might have turned up -

“So you think I should still -”

“No.”

He watches it hurt her. He feels perfectly balanced, for a moment, as though on one foot atop the junction between the past and the future. It still feels easy to guess what she’s about to say, to understand what she’s thinking, with all the palpable certainty of their inseparable childhood. And it feels easier than he expected to keep his face impassive, to watch her go from shocked to stung without echoing the feelings back. He’s going to need that.

“They don’t mean anything. But if you really _wanted_ to be a fox, this wouldn’t have made you doubt it. It would have made you more determined.” He knows. He knows too personally. “It would have made you _angry_.” Istradez has always been quicker to anger than him. The lag is telling.

“You think I’m not angry?” Istradez snarls, suddenly all teeth and flashing eyes, one hand slamming against the surface of the terminal, like she could break through it from another planet just to shake him.

He puts his palm up against the terminal on his side, splayed to match. Istradez’s fingernails are longer, tipped with some kind of crystalline effect, but their fingers are exactly the same.

“With _me_ , for saying it. That’s not the same thing.” He loves her enough not to name anything else she’s feeling - fear, hurt, confusion.

“If you really wanted to be a Shuos, this wouldn’t make you doubt it,” he repeats, soft and inexorable. “Which means you never did.”

“But I did. I wanted - I’ve missed you.”

“ _I’m_ not the Shuos. The whole faction, everything you’d be dedicating yourself to - and _it_ isn’t me.” He would laugh, but his voice is still breaking occasionally and his chest feels too tight to risk it. “Sweetness, I just go to _school_ here.”

She laughs. Bright, sharp, slightly off kilter. She laughs when he doesn’t dare: one of the many things he loves about her.

“You don’t have to throw your life away for me.”

He’s said something wrong. He can tell the moment it leaves his mouth, the way the glower rolls over her face like a thundercloud. The terminal goes blank without even a word goodbye. It’s really bad, if she won’t even yell at him.

But there’s also nothing he can do about it now. If he tries to push it, she won't answer. He rips open a bag of candies he’d been saving, and pulls up his Regression Analytics homework until she's willing to call him back.

*

Istradez tries being different people. If they aren’t - who they thought they were, half of Istra-and-Miki-forever, then they could be _anyone_. They change genders six times in eight years. They’ll try anything that pays and doesn’t last long - backstage logistics at local festivals, nine hours straight stomping in pits of knee-deep artisanal paper pulp, seasonal ecomaintenance running signal drones to modify snowbat migrations, code-combing through endless databanks of genetic scraps. He signs on to a border skiff, tries being slick and mercantile and diplomatic on one run, tries being coraller on the other, personable and effusive and gracious. Sees a dozen dozen worlds. They get gill mods and spend most of a year working hydromech interface jobs in the warm, shallow seas of a water planet, all unstable sandbar archipelagos and bubble cities nested into coral forests, troubleshooting depth gauges and untangling newt sharks from purification grilles. 

“You could have gone for the Andan,” Mikodez points out toward the end of the second year, when Istradez is long-haired and pearly-eyed, regaling him with the escapades of an Unaffiliated Investigator, snooping and seducing out the secrets of smaller worlds than the ones he moves in. “You can’t tell me you weren’t tempted.”

She was. A life of performing, a life full of beauty.

But it felt - she just didn’t want to. They still don’t. They know some of the kinds of people they can be, now, and they can guess the shape of the person Andan Istradez would become. Happy - but not the kind of happy they want. 

“You still could,” Mikodez points out, as Istradez switches out scale-pattern hair clips. “It wouldn’t make us enemies.”

 _It would make us forever slightly less than allies_ , Istradez thinks, not that any of their dallying _matters_ , not that they have anything to offer an alliance with a Shuos agent in training. 

“Maybe it isn’t fucking about you,” they lie.

*

In the four months since he last saw Istradez in person, Zehun’s plan - their plan, because it is _his plan too_ , even if Zehun’s version of it intends or just allows for him to burn out before he’s thirty, or have his throat slit by New Year’s - has almost finished its first phase. Shuos Seleno will be escaping to tranquil, avian-addled obscurity in the next three weeks. He won’t survive long enough to prove himself if he doesn’t have _someone_ he can truly, absolutely rely on. And there isn’t anyone else. He’s put off asking; he doesn’t know which answer he’s more afraid to hear.

He invited Istradez to Mezin, one of those glittering ecumenopoli built in three swooping dimensions, tunnels branching down and spires weaving up, an endless fractal city of endless diversions, perfect for treating him. Mikodez doesn’t care much for the eccentric, hyper specialized neighborhoods, or the grapple acrobats performing magnetically-enhanced leaps with the aid of stunt pilots weaving through the predominantly servitor-managed traffic, or the artifacts galleries full of solid-jade miniature fountains and hand-stained variable mandalas, or the restaurants with supposedly-exquisite plum wine that Mikodez doesn’t like nearly as much as the cheap, sickly sweet stuff. But it is - diverting, at least, from what he refuses to call nervousness, catches his attention and doesn’t wear it out, and Istradez has spent the last three days on his arm, chattering and beaming as he rapidly took over the itinerary, to Mikodez’s bemusement. 

After dinner, Mikodez brought him back to their floating suite, with the crystal-clear floor in the sunken central basin for gazing at the constant churning lights of the world city below. Mikodez took him to bed, because Istradez likes that too, and it’s been too long since Mikodez heard the _particular_ laugh, helpless and breathless and delighted, that his sibling makes when Mikodez tickles them in the afterglow.

Istradez is a man again this year, which at least makes asking a little easier, makes it feel less drastic than really it is - he’s not thinking about that, yet, because this could easily be construed as part of reeling Istradez in, because it _is_ partly that, if Mikodez were forced to be horribly and completely honest. But it isn’t just seduction. He strokes a hand up Istradez’s thigh while he sucks him off, and the glint of white teeth against dark skin where he’s just biting his lip, the soft hopeful hunger in his eyes, makes Mikodez’s chest ache like nothing else.

He wants to stay in bed, after, just stroking warm skin, listening to the low, appreciative groans he can get for it, let the strange rare peace of the moment fill him up like syrup poured slowly into a pitcher. But Istradez gets restless first, this time, swirls on some silks and tells the room to give them music, pulls Mikodez into the basin to dance on air, the city shining below.

“Istra,” he murmurs as they sway slowly, cheek to cheek, Mikodez’s hand warm in the small of his back. “I need your help.”

*

Ten years and two months into Mikodez’s tenure, while said Hexarch is in council, Zehun mentions to Istradez that they’ve beaten the odds. Istradez lounges a little bit deeper into his chair, even though the chair isn’t really built for it, since he doesn’t have to pretend anything in particular at the moment, as long as he’s consistent about the contrast.

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” he drawls, more than asks.

“It doesn’t mean _don’t_ be paranoid,” Zehun says, their thin mouth puckered as though it physically pains them to explicate anything for a non-Shuos. “But you should watch in front of you just as much as you watch your back.”

Istradez knows better than to ask the same question twice.

It stays with him, like a bit of fishbone in his throat. Digging and itching and choking. Ten years. Shuos Hexarchs almost never - it wasn’t like he didn’t know that he would have to do this for the rest of his life. Of course he knew. If he’s only concentrating on making sure Mikodez survives the next day, and the next - that’s what he’s _for_. 

He can’t remember a day he hasn’t been terrified about _something_ , can’t remember a moment he wasn’t exhausted, didn’t need to learn more of the infinite amount of information always swirling around the Hexarch’s attention, can’t remember a day he didn’t watch Mikodez smile with one of a dozen particular lilts he has to know by heart, and read in it how much _more_ strain it is for him, for real. He can’t remember the last time he cared enough to flinch at anything he read in a report, either.

They’ve beaten the odds. They’re only _thirty-five_. They could be doing this for another -

He drinks enough execrable lavender cordial to send Medical into a tizzy, because it came in a beautiful faceted bottle covered in murky olive-and-emerald water monkeys, and because it makes him vomit until he feels completely hollow.

He drifts under the weight of the hangover on his head, in the blunted felt cushion of the rehydration treatment, and lets himself remember being fifteen and fearless, when she woke up next to Mikodez almost every morning. In one room or the other. How _easy_ it was to climb onto him and slide their bodies together, unguarded and hungry and new. The perpetually baffled air Miki had after, especially if he hadn’t been entirely awake when she started, noticing only after the fact that his body at sixteen could react so much to “such a silly collection of amateur acrobatics,” as he put it during a particularly pretentious phase.

It’s not the _sex_ that he misses, but that feeling, the falling-off-the-bed-laughing at Mikodez blinking just a little stupidly, or getting _pushed_ off when she teased him too much, or watching him pull himself together in the bathroom, buttoning his collar and brushing his hair, when it all added up to picking an angle instead of touching up a mask. When she used to find new candies for him, instead of always nagging about real food.

He isn’t good at this. He thought being a fantastic fucking actor who knew his brother from the bones up would be all the skill set he needed but he can’t stop being a sentimental fuck who wants - Mikodez would tell him anything he needed to hear, and for just a moment it makes him want to change his face to something stranger than Zehun’s and disappear on a planet he’s never heard of before. Mikodez would give him anything he asked for, except he wants not to have to _ask_ , wants Mikodez to reach for _him_. But Mikodez isn’t the kind of Hexarch who reveals desires for anything less trivial than entertainment and layered pastries. 

Tails knotted, he thinks. His own worst enemy, all tangled up. But here he is, living a Shuos’s life, lying and scheming and toying with lives from the heart of the Citadel of Eyes, because Mikodez _is_ the Shuos, after all. 

They adjust his meds so that the world feels sharp and clean and slightly numb, like the air on ice planets. He puts his fox furs back on. They’ve beaten the odds. 

* 

Mikodez should sleep. Istradez will only be upset with him again if he doesn’t get at least an hour or two, but - 

Istradez is breaking in the new double. 

Shuos Enlai is trained in resisting torture, interrogation, scrying, and chemical alteration. Every test suggested a man who could not be bribed, swayed, or threatened. His historical preferences run to curvy and pale. Istradez seduced him in nine days. 

Not that Mikodez has ever minded Istradez enjoying anyone he wants. Not that there’s anything particularly interesting about the repetitive thrusting, beyond the amusing fact of his little brother’s tenacity. He doesn’t know why he’s watching. It’s not as though he _needs_ a reason. The more eyes the better. 

Istradez’s lips are moving. 

Mikodez flips the sound on and immediately regrets it: he can’t hear anything over Enlai’s moaning and begging. He spends twenty minutes digging through the audio files trying to find something he can isolate before he has to concede that Istradez was subvocalizing, motions too small for the reconstruction software to give him anything useful and no sound at all. By then, Enlai is already limping, with hazy fuck-drunk eyes not nearly as charming as Istra’s, despite the now identical shape and color, back to his own apartments. 

Mikodez moves before he can talk himself out of it. 

“I told you not to -” Istradez grumbles, when his shape crosses the doorway - designed deliberately to silhouette anyone entering against the pale gold enameling on the opposite wall, a clear shot for anyone inside. And then, “Oh. Miki?” 

The inquisitive tone has none of the tentativeness of _is it you_. More a befuddled _what are you doing here_. And _then_ , gravelly and exasperated, “ _Why_ are you not asleep?” 

“ _You’re_ not asleep,” Mikodez points out, peeling off his robes and sliding into the bed next to Istradez, tucking his nose into the damp curls at the nape of his neck, draping his arms around Istradez’s waist. 

“ _I_ don’t have a meeting in three hours.” 

“You do if I say you do,” Mikodez points out, too tired, suddenly, to make it sound lofty and matter-of-fact instead of deeply smug. 

“...you _monster_ ,” Istradez breathes. 

“The longer you spend complaining, the less sleep for either us,” he continues blithely. Istradez tries to elbow him cruelly in the liver before Mikodez catches his wrist, squeezes hard enough to bruise, holds him still. 

“Go to sleep,” he orders firmly. The tone is wrong - it should have been either colder or gentler, not an adulterated brittle alloy of the two. 

Istradez is silent for a moment, then tugs on his captive wrist. Mikodez - doesn’t relent, but he lets Istra pull him after a moment, and Istradez brings his Mikodez’s hand to his mouth, presses a kiss to the back of it. It would have been a dry kiss, close-mouthed and brief, if his lips weren’t still slick. 

“Okay,” he says. “Goodnight.” 

**Author's Note:**

> An AFAB character who presents as comfortably male during the canon time period is depicted as genderfluid and nondysphoric rather than exclusively as a transman/always male-identified; the character has POV sections in which they mentally identify as female, non-binary, and male over the course of the fic. After transitioning to a male identity permanently, not entirely for personal reasons, he remembers periods of his life during which he had a female identity, including positive non-detailed memories of sex in a female body. None of the character's emotional distress is gender or body related.


End file.
